Fall Patch changes discussion thread

[GoodSarmatian]

How much DOES a Landsknecht cost? This sounds like a bug, normal units don't move on the turn they are purchased, and with Arsenal of Democracy, this sounds like it could have some pretty unfortunate consequences.

Their civilopedia entry says they can move on the same turn, so it is definitely intended. I play on epic speed and without any discounts a Landsknecht costs 300 and 220 with Mercantilism. I don't have Big ben, but Landsknecht will cost around 60% as much as a Pikeman, maybe a little bit less. I can afford to buy one every second turn. I don't think Arsenal of Democracy is such a big issue. You can still only gift units every third turn and by the times ideologies become available you'll have to upgrade them to remain useful. It's a cheap way to gain influence, but it's still a lot weaker than Treaty Organization or Gunboat Diplomacy.

 

[Yucatan]

EDIT: I disagree that rationalism should be nerfed. It was OP in vanilla but in BNW it's fine as is. And correction, it doesn't give happiness bonuses so you must be referring to old rationalism.

I think you got tons of way to get happiness whereas Rationalism is by far the science buffer. And science is the core of almost all victories. Still need a nerf i think; like some wrote here +1 beaker (secularism) / + 5% science opener should be nice.

 

[Cicerosaurus]

I found the diplomatic boost for building a culture site for a CS to be a bit "oh yeah". Not much more than establishing a trade route (I think).

 

[Matthew.]

I think you got tons of way to get happiness whereas Rationalism is by far the science buffer. And science is the core of almost all victories. Still need a nerf i think; like some wrote here +1 beaker (secularism) / + 5% science opener should be nice.

The 50% boost on RA's is doing way more than an extra 5% on the opener.

Personally I'd prefer they move one of the Great Scientist slots on Universities to Research Labs instead. Education is already one of the most important techs, if not the most important tech in the game. Secularism and opener is simply a by-product, not the cause of the massive beaker jump. It would also promote some variance in tech path. Education would still be a high priority, but with the ability to only work 1 GS slot and slower GS generation, putting off Education for other techs while working other GP slots (+2 secularism) would be comparable.

Rationalism is nerfed enough as is. I'd rather seem them buff other policies, like +2 science per building on Mercantilism.

 

[Moroten]

"Added 3 more City-States (Vilnius, Bogota and Wellington, one of each type)."

There are 5 different kind of city states. Which ones are these?

 

[Yucatan]

The 50% boost on RA's is doing way more than an extra 5% on the opener.
Secularism and opener is simply a by-product, not the cause of the massive beaker jump.

I personnaly vote for nerfing not for hammer-nerfing strong deep tree policies man. Secularism and opener can be at least a +20 % science overall. It's just too strong. And don't forget that boosted-RA are great but rare in a warmongering strategy (you exclude one VC in your reasoning)

Rationalism is nerfed enough as is. I'd rather seem them buff other policies, like +2 science per building on Mercantilism.

There is a drawback adding science in other trees, since science is core, you'll get cookie-cutter builds every game like Trad into Rationalism + Micro picking science buff policies in other trees every game (and according to other comments commerce buff seems to be really nice atm). Science is too core to be buffed that much.

"Added 3 more City-States (Vilnius, Bogota and Wellington, one of each type)."

There are 5 different kind of city states. Which ones are these?

Mercantile (Vilnius); Culture (Bogota); i guess Wellington is Maritime.

 

[Browd]

Wellington is Maritime.

 

[Light Cleric]

People really need to stop screaming for a Rationalism nerf. It's been nerfed to hell at back. The only thing that might need to be changed is Secularism moved up 1 policy but the policy that got moved in front of it would almost surely need a buff.

Its overuse is a symptom, not the problem. For one the other trees are just bad in a lot of situations. Second, and much more importantly, Civ V is just too centric on science as a whole and most VCs are just a different flavor of a Science Victory. The tech tree has some big flaws in it that don't help with this, either.

 

[joncnunn]

Looks like there is social policy discussion going on; my own main thoughts is that Aesthetics could be given a minor boost by:

1. Having the opener be the policy that makes all cultural buildings cheaper and the first left policy be the one with the great person generation boost.

2. Allowing it to be opened in Ancient era.

The other things I would do to have more standard openers than Tradition & Liberty:

1. Minor nerf to Tradition by changing the global food bonus in the finisher to just the first 4 cities.

2. Minor nerf to Liberty by removing the free great person to finisher; the golden age in a policy would get moved to the finisher.

Exploration & Commerce: Have the commerce bonus to land routes apply to all trade routes.
Change the exploration spot currently taken by sea trade to allow cash buying of Archaeologists.
Decrease number of regular ruins by about 50% and increase by the same number the hidden ones.

General: Give GE, GM, and GS their own separate next amount needed to spawn instead of a shared value.

 

[Matthew.]

And don't forget that boosted-RA are great but rare in a warmongering strategy (you exclude one VC in your reasoning)

I rarely go full Rationalism in war-monger games, and I'm not even saying nerf RA's. I'm on the stance that Rationalism has been nerfed enough. Sure, the opener is an instant-grab, but so what? Make it 5% and nothing changes. People will still grab it right away and the other policies, such as the 50% RA boost, will result in games with just as much overall science. A minor nerf to the opener does nothing.

Secularism can stay at +2. Like I said, move one of the GS slots. The reduction of 5 science is the equivalent of a +1 secularism on 5 different GP slots (likely 4 culture slots and the 1 remaining uni slot). You still get the same benefit as +1 Secularism along with slower GS generation.

Doing it this way greatly lessens the importance of Education. Just nerfing Secularism to +1 still means you are getting an instant +8 science and 6 points to GS generation from Education. The other way means only +5 science and 3 points to GS generation.

There is a drawback adding science in other trees, since science is core, you'll get cookie-cutter builds every game like Trad into Rationalism + Micro picking science buff policies in other trees every game (and according to other comments commerce buff seems to be really nice atm). Science is too core to be buffed that much.

I strongly disagree. Yes, science is core, but the game isn't going to get away from that. We are on two expansions and after what will be one of the last major patches. Science is core, and that fact is here to stay.

To combat it, you spread out science bonuses to give interesting choices. Dropping points into Commerce and building gold buildings is an opportunity cost. If you choose to go that path and are rewarded with similar science gains, you won't feel forced to go straight into full Rationalism ASAP. To keep things thematic, you attach the science bonuses to other elements, such as Scholasticism and Patronage, or Mercantilism and Commerce.

Think of it like happiness, another core element in the game. Since happiness bonuses are spread all over, I get variety in many of my games. Sure, there will be an optimal choice, but there will always be an optimal choice. You cannot change that. But there is variety. I've gone Exploration before, since I had a large number of coastal cities and it allowed me to build the Louvre. I get the similar number of smilies if I were to go straight into Ideology tenets, along with the bonuses from Exploration policies.

Science should work the same way: I should be able to choose to play a game with Commerce and Patronage, end up with a competitive amount of beakers, yet get to play a different game that focuses on gold buildings and CS alliances.

 

[Txurce]

To combat it, you spread out science bonuses to give interesting choices. Dropping points into Commerce and building gold buildings is an opportunity cost. If you choose to go that path and are rewarded with similar science gains, you won't feel forced to go straight into full Rationalism ASAP. To keep things thematic, you attach the science bonuses to other elements, such as Scholasticism and Patronage, or Mercantilism and Commerce.

Science should work the same way: I should be able to choose to play a game with Commerce and Patronage, end up with a competitive amount of beakers, yet get to play a different game that focuses on gold buildings and CS alliances.

I see the upside in theory - more variety - but in reality think it limits choice in a different way: certain civs would always tilt toward Honor, or Com, or Piety, etc., and you'd wind up with cookie-cutter SP strats for many civs.

The alternative is to make the early policies of every tree relatively powerful - that way you may always take the first two in Rat (or the first two in Pat pre-patch), but will be strongly tempted by other trees as well, and may well never finish a tree. I believe this is the approach the devs have taken, however imperfectly. That science is predominant is probably a reflection on the historical reality.

 

[Hulking Lummox]

I am loving the patch, especially the changes to Japan and Germany. I have rolled a few games in the beta so far and haven't seen any bugs really, however I am having a big problem with warmonger penalties. The AI's are really really REALLY ganging up more than usual against warmongering. I am not liking the mood in the games I'm playing. Were the changes to AI reactions to warmongering just display changes or were some values changed?

In one game I conquered a single city state to be my second city really early on. It was protected by Korea who it bordered and who I was planning to go to war with in short order. Sure enough that plan was shot to hell when 3 civs from across the map all DOW'ed me because they hate warmongers. Korea didn't even really get that upset by comparison. Eventually after beating back Assyria in particular I made peace with everyone and got back to my plan of elbow room. After I had conquered the Korean capital (the second city I had captured) I was back at war with Assyria in the west, fighting across the lands of my allied city state who separated us and then was sneak attacked in the east by Sweden who had crossed my Friend Egypt's territory with no less than 6 longswordsman and then some. Simply put, it wasn't fun. It was triage right from the get go and unlike in the distant past where the AI's just all hated you regardless of what you did, it now feels like they all hate you the moment you conquer anything. And no, this wasn't a problem in my previous BNW games.

The same thing is happening again in a much further along game. As Japan I got a wonderful isolationist start on my own small continent. I basically was an economically and militarily strong underdog. After I had expanded I all over my area I was invited into my first war by Austria. We became friends and went to war with Persia. I snatched up one Persian city on an island for my empire. I then decided I wanted one single city state that might be my foothold for future conquests on the other side of the map. Nothing was shown in the DOW window so it should have been smooth conquering, right? Boy was I wrong. Austria and Carthage, the two civs I was friendly with (not friends with Carthage, however) both declared war on me immediately. All of my sea trade routes were plundered in short order and my economy went to approximately -20gpt. I am continuing to play the game out but it just made me shake my head. I wanted to have a chance to be a warmonger but with no ability to sustain trade and war it just isn't going to happen, at least not as far behind as I am.

Whatever is going on with the various levels of civs disliking warmongers is not good. For one, I don't think it's possible to find out how a civ will react before you go to war ("They hate warmongers!" Etc.) Secondly, there should be ways diplomatically to basically bribe civs or use a diplomat in their empire to soften the warmonger penalty. Third, the amount that civs hate warmongers should start lower and increase over time - for instance, why would any ancient people really care about warmongering unless they were in a web of friendships and close borders against the aggressors? Warmonger penalties should be like a ripple of water that affects those closest until later eras. In fact I think the base value of the penalty should be 0 unless you share contested borders and then increase slightly each era. The amount of penalty you receive when warmongering should be based on whether an uninvolved civ has trade routes connecting with the defender, whether they share a religion, DoF's or Pledges to Protect with the Defender, a diplomat or election-rigging spy embedded with the defender, whether the aggressor has a diplomat with the uninvolved party and so on. Allow more of the penalty to trickle through to the other AI's as they build up actual co-dependence with the defender so they don't just arbitrarily freak out at first blood.

My .02

 

[Matthew.]

Several cookie-cutter strats is still better than just one cookie-cutter strat.

There will always been an optimal choice, there is no way around it. The best you can do is make sure other choices are competitive. If that means forcing in other cookie-cutter strats, then so be it.

I suppose another way to put it is the combination of a certain set of choices should end up in similar results. Tradition and Liberty is a good example.

 

[kaspergm]

People really need to stop screaming for a Rationalism nerf. It's been nerfed to hell at back. The only thing that might need to be changed is Secularism moved up 1 policy but the policy that got moved in front of it would almost surely need a buff.

Its overuse is a symptom, not the problem. For one the other trees are just bad in a lot of situations. Second, and much more importantly, Civ V is just too centric on science as a whole and most VCs are just a different flavor of a Science Victory. The tech tree has some big flaws in it that don't help with this, either.

I sort of agree with this, although the conclusion I come to might be different than yours. I think Rationalism is the only tree that is universally useful in the game, and for that reason, it will get visits in most games (Tradition is also borderline universally useful). The only thing that holds me off from Rationalism in many games since BnW is that it opens just shortly before ideologies and hence I tend to put my attention there instead of Rationalism (and because if I'm not very pressed, I can outmatch the AI even without Rationalism at the difficulty levels I play).

There are a couple of small tweaks that could be done to Rationalism to make it less powerful. First of all, Sovereignty needs to be moved up into first level because this is lowest priority policy in the tree, and the policy that sits behind it needs to be (very) good. Reason why this is so is because it's too easy to pick all policies except Sovereignty and then push that one off to very late game to harvest the free technology from the finisher at that point. At least now with GS faith buying being linked to the finisher that is some opportunity cost to holding off the finisher, but if you are just saving up faith to pop those scientists for your last jump for the space ship, that won't make much of a difference. Apart from this, Secularism could be cut down to 1 Science pr. specialist, but if the tree gets cut so much that's its not worth the opportunity cost to go into it, it might as well be completely removed.

For those reasons, I think the game might be better if Rationalism was not there as a tree at all. Because Science is key for any victory condition, it doesn't make much sense to have a tree dedicated to just that. Some of the benefits could be moved to other trees - for instance, bonus to Research Agreements (with civ with shared ideology) could easily go into ideologies, Freedom already has a tennet that increases Great Person (and hence Great Scientist) spawn rate and I'm not even sure I think we need policies like Sovereignty and Free Thought (at least the University bonus of it).

 

[Rohili]

I am loving the patch, especially the changes to Japan and Germany. I have rolled a few games in the beta so far and haven't seen any bugs really, however I am having a big problem with warmonger penalties. The AI's are really really REALLY ganging up more than usual against warmongering. I am not liking the mood in the games I'm playing. Were the changes to AI reactions to warmongering just display changes or were some values changed?

In one game I conquered a single city state to be my second city really early on. It was protected by Korea who it bordered and who I was planning to go to war with in short order. Sure enough that plan was shot to hell when 3 civs from across the map all DOW'ed me because they hate warmongers. Korea didn't even really get that upset by comparison. Eventually after beating back Assyria in particular I made peace with everyone and got back to my plan of elbow room. After I had conquered the Korean capital (the second city I had captured) I was back at war with Assyria in the west, fighting across the lands of my allied city state who separated us and then was sneak attacked in the east by Sweden who had crossed my Friend Egypt's territory with no less than 6 longswordsman and then some. Simply put, it wasn't fun. It was triage right from the get go and unlike in the distant past where the AI's just all hated you regardless of what you did, it now feels like they all hate you the moment you conquer anything. And no, this wasn't a problem in my previous BNW games.

The same thing is happening again in a much further along game. As Japan I got a wonderful isolationist start on my own small continent. I basically was an economically and militarily strong underdog. After I had expanded I all over my area I was invited into my first war by Austria. We became friends and went to war with Persia. I snatched up one Persian city on an island for my empire. I then decided I wanted one single city state that might be my foothold for future conquests on the other side of the map. Nothing was shown in the DOW window so it should have been smooth conquering, right? Boy was I wrong. Austria and Carthage, the two civs I was friendly with (not friends with Carthage, however) both declared war on me immediately. All of my sea trade routes were plundered in short order and my economy went to approximately -20gpt. I am continuing to play the game out but it just made me shake my head. I wanted to have a chance to be a warmonger but with no ability to sustain trade and war it just isn't going to happen, at least not as far behind as I am.

I think your problem is that you conquered city states. The warmonger penalty has always been incredibly high for those who conquer city states, because it counts as taking one city from a civ that has only that one city. It is something that definitely needs to be fixed (mainly because it penalises civs like Mongolia), but it has nothing to do with the beta patch.

 

[Light Cleric]

I sort of agree with this, although the conclusion I come to might be different than yours. I think Rationalism is the only tree that is universally useful in the game, and for that reason, it will get visits in most games (Tradition is also borderline universally useful). The only thing that holds me off from Rationalism in many games since BnW is that it opens just shortly before ideologies and hence I tend to put my attention there instead of Rationalism (and because if I'm not very pressed, I can outmatch the AI even without Rationalism at the difficulty levels I play).

There are a couple of small tweaks that could be done to Rationalism to make it less powerful. First of all, Sovereignty needs to be moved up into first level because this is lowest priority policy in the tree, and the policy that sits behind it needs to be (very) good. Reason why this is so is because it's too easy to pick all policies except Sovereignty and then push that one off to very late game to harvest the free technology from the finisher at that point. At least now with GS faith buying being linked to the finisher that is some opportunity cost to holding off the finisher, but if you are just saving up faith to pop those scientists for your last jump for the space ship, that won't make much of a difference. Apart from this, Secularism could be cut down to 1 Science pr. specialist, but if the tree gets cut so much that's its not worth the opportunity cost to go into it, it might as well be completely removed.

For those reasons, I think the game might be better if Rationalism was not there as a tree at all. Because Science is key for any victory condition, it doesn't make much sense to have a tree dedicated to just that. Some of the benefits could be moved to other trees - for instance, bonus to Research Agreements (with civ with shared ideology) could easily go into ideologies, Freedom already has a tennet that increases Great Person (and hence Great Scientist) spawn rate and I'm not even sure I think we need policies like Sovereignty and Free Thought (at least the University bonus of it).

Basically I feel like if anything got re-arranged in Rationalism there would need to be something to compensate for it and the other trees still need to be stronger. IMO Social Policies should be very powerful for how relatively few of them you get esp. with Ideologies taking from them now. Rationalism is no longer a "no brain" pick to me but the more I play BNW the more I am disappointed in the other trees.

Exploration is garbage most of them and isn't even that good in the situations where you might take it. This patch buffs Commerce but it still may not be enough, we'll have to see. Aesthetics and Piety are basically CV-only(and even then Piety is optional). With Patronage, IMO Consulates should have been reworked entirely, Merchant Confederacy still blows, Scholasticism is useful but requires a lot of CS allies because how it was nerfed a while back(CSes not building NC).

The tech tree also needs some reworks but that would kind of be a derail here.

 

[Yucatan]

To combat it, you spread out science bonuses to give interesting choices. Dropping points into Commerce and building gold buildings is an opportunity cost. If you choose to go that path and are rewarded with similar science gains, you won't feel forced to go straight into full Rationalism ASAP. To keep things thematic, you attach the science bonuses to other elements, such as Scholasticism and Patronage, or Mercantilism and Commerce.

Science should work the same way: I should be able to choose to play a game with Commerce and Patronage, end up with a competitive amount of beakers, yet get to play a different game that focuses on gold buildings and CS alliances.

We don't disagree Matthew. Science spreding in other trees could solve. But they make rationalism. And you can't really buff other trees with science bonuses AND having a huge science buffing tree. They just took game design decision, science is core and there is a science tree. I don't think they'll replace Rationalism in a patch.

[...]

For those reasons, I think the game might be better if Rationalism was not there as a tree at all. Because Science is key for any victory condition, it doesn't make much sense to have a tree dedicated to just that. Some of the benefits could be moved to other trees - for instance, bonus to Research Agreements (with civ with shared ideology) could easily go into ideologies, Freedom already has a tennet that increases Great Person (and hence Great Scientist) spawn rate and I'm not even sure I think we need policies like Sovereignty and Free Thought (at least the University bonus of it).

I agree with that; but again in a patch can we hope for other thing than a nerf rationalism - buff other trees ? It's the fastest way to handle Rationalism frenzy and i think they won't take time to tone down science or revamp techtree at this point.

 

[Quineloe]

My question about Commerce is this: will Mercenary Army still be useful if you don't get it right away? Commerce is usually a tertiary tree for me, at best. But if I want to get Protectionism some time in the Industrial Era, will Mercenary Army be a complete waste of a policy? Or will I be able to do something else with those Landsknecht?

Even if you can upgrade them into lancers / anti-tanks / helicopters, I probably would never use this policy post-Renaissance. Especially if the upgrade cost is the same as Germany's was. The upgrade cost is related to the difference in hammer cost between the old and the new units, but Landsknecht cost so few hammers that the cost to upgrade them into lancers was even more than it was to upgrade pikemen, hardly any cheaper than buying a brand new lancer, which most players never do anyway. If the upgrade cost is prohibitive and all you get is a crappy lancer / anti-tank / helicopter (not to mention it'd take 3 turns of upgrades to get your helicopter), it seems like this will be a waste of a policy unless you get it as soon as Commerce becomes available. Its only value would be to get to Protectionism.

My thoughts exactly. This policy should scale with eras.
At least, commerce is now also about money.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

Four games and I'm definitely starting to see more AI aggression with the patch (and this is a VERY good thing IMO).

From the release version of BNW I got in a very bad habit of all but ignoring military and superheating the econ and science for relatively easy wins. My first game of the beta followed a similar pattern although I was attack in the 1800s in that game, it was a clumsy attack by Gandhi that actually end up costing him a city despite the fact that I had near zero military when he DoW'ed. In my second game I was never attacked and moved forward for a Science win. It seemed like not much had changed.

But my last two games have followed a different path. In the first of the two, I was attacked a handful of times by Alexander and even though I threw back his attacks, it kept me building military and maintaining one leading to less superheating of the econ. I did not win that game (and it was great to actually lose due the AI keeping me in check for a change). In the second game (which I just played), Dido hit me REALLY early (before Ironworking) and I lost a city to her attack. I stopped her at the gates of my capital but she sent more units and took my only other city. That game is a loss too.

To me, this is GREAT news. It means I can't just sit back and play nice nice with the AIs and fly forward to an easy victory. I actually have to be on my guard a bit again. IMO, I wouldn't mind a bit more AI aggression if I'm pushing ahead economically but lagging militarily but it's certainly an improvement over pre-beta.

I'm actually looking forward to my next game and playing a more balanced approach.

 

[eewallace]

So far, I like the new patch. Here is what I've seen so far (and some of this may just be random: (1) More wars, and earlier, particularly where borders are close; (2) AI is much more creative with trade deals; (3) Japan may have been buffed enough so that it no longer is always last in score (AI Japan is sort of middle in score in my current game); (4) Krakatoa showed up 2 tiles off the coast--I've never seen that before! (5) City-State troops and workers seem to be wandering around alot more, not sure what that is all about.